A 16th-century Racket with a metal body brightly painted to resemble a dragon; it is a relatively squat double-reed instrument with a cylindrical coiled metal tube pierced by seven finger-holes and a thumb-hole. The crook forms a twisted dragon’s tail, and the bell is the dragon’s mouth with a trembling tongue, made of iron. Only one set of five Tartölten or Tartölden – two trebles, two tenors and a bass – is known to exist and is now in Vienna (see illustration). The three sizes produce as their lowest notes A, d and a. The five instruments are named in the 1596 inventory of the collection at that time in Archduke Ferdinand’s castle of Ambras near Innsbruck. The word ‘Tartölt’ may be derived either from Kortholt (that is, a short wind instrument) or from torto (It.: ‘crooked’). The instrument may have been used for theatrical events; similarly disguised instruments were often described in reports of 16th-century Italian intermedii. The Tartölten from Vienna are described more fully in J. von Schlosser: Die Sammlung alter Musikinstrumente (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, 1920).
HOWARD MAYER BROWN